Still-Life Study of an Ancestor

Warren Walling (seed of fishers of the sea 
who warred to birth a nation of vast vision) 
studied thrift, hard labor, common sense, 
belief in God and good; grasped the Word 

and with his outcast wife and six offspring 
plodded to Iowa in time to see the Saints 
escape; settled, nevertheless, printed, thrived, 
sired two more children (who lived past birth), 

and on a prudent day incautiously looked West;
Captain of saints, he urged legendary oxen 
from privation into Zion’s turmoil, confronting
disease, purges, Johnson’s Army, Anti-Bigamy 

laws, Brother Brigham’s counsels; battled 
soft-haired Emma’s joining with a married man
her father’s age, wept for granddaughters 
dying one by one, born to that union; 

gathered all but Emma and her sister, Rachel, 
abandoned eight years’ land and cattle, dreams;
and not foreseeing through despair a century 
when scores of his seed blossom in the Rose 

valiantly singing old hymns of belief 
in things he knew, un-flicked by his scourge, 
he died in Iowa and laid his shattered dust 
beneath the stone of reasoned sacrifice.